The Red Star of Ruin

I was recently sent an excerpt from some ancient Irish Celtic folktales about Deirdre of Ulster. Deirdre was a woman of legendary beauty who occupied a tragic position in the old Celtic pagan mythology, similar to that of Helen of Troy. There are other connections with Near East paganism to explore here, too, in the form of Bel or Baal. From her birth, prophecies were told that the beautiful Deirdre would be the cause of great strife and war. In this context, my friend Mickey noticed in his reading of the old poem that Deirdre was likened to a ‘red star of ruin’:

“O Deirdre, terrible child,

For thee, red star of our ruin,

Great weeping shall be in Eri-

Woe, woe, and a breach in Ulla.”

Druid song of Cathvah“ (1)

Where does the concept of this portent come from? Comets were often associated with catastrophe in ancient times, but not red stars. Perhaps it denoted the planet Mars, with its long-held association with gods of war? That would be within context. However, the translation is specifically a star, rather than a planet or ‘wandering star’. Perhaps they are denoting the prominent Taurean red star Aldebaran, which has been associated by some with the ancient Celtic festival of Beltaine (2).

Whether this association with Aldebaran is correct or not (and I suspect it isn’t), the connection with Beltaine itself is interesting because its meaning is ‘the two fires of Bile’. The festival marks the end of winter, and a ritual of purification which takes place between two fires. If we have a red star as one of these ‘fires’, then might we assume that the Sun is the other?

The origin of the Celtic people of Ireland is linked to waves of migration from both central Europe, and also from Northern Spain, during the Stone Age (3). Nowadays, we know that there was a far greater inter-connectivity between ancient peoples than many once assumed, and a Gnostic-like sharing of ideas across cultures. Even so, the origins of the Druids remains somewhat mysterious – our only real historical sources coming from the conquering Romans. But associations have often been made with the Phoenicians, whose wanderlust took them far and wide. It is little wonder, then, that the Druid god Bel has been associated with the ancient near-Eastern fire god Baal (4). Indeed, the fires that were (are?) traditionally lit upon Irish hills on Midsummer’s Eve were known as the Baal Fires, as ancient pagan Sun-worship ritual (5). Again, not too much of a stretch to consider how the festival of Beltaine, with its two fires, may in some way be denoting something of great significance from ancient mythology, stemming from the ancient lands of Mesopotamia.

I’ve come across Baal before in my researches. Ba’al initially meant simply ‘Lord’ in Semitic languages of the north-western Levant, before being applied to deities of various descriptions. Baal was worshipped across the Levant region, particularly by the Canaanites and the Phoenicians. Of particular interest to this discussion is a Palymyrene stela showing the trinity of Baal deities: Aglibol Baal, Shamene Baal and Shamene Malakbel clad in Roman armour from around 250AD. Tragically, the temple of Baal Shamin in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, was destroyed by the so-called Islamic State/ISIS in 2015. This trinity of Palmyrene deities were Babylonian in origin:

“Before the arrival of Christianity in the second century, Palmyra worshipped the trinity of the Babylonian god Bel, Yarhibol (the sun) and Aglibol (the moon).” (6)

The images have clear celestial symbolism. The Moon and Sun gods are easy enough to make out. It’s the third, central deity, Shamene Baal, whose celestial identity is less easy to determine. It seems to me to take on some of the Winged Disk symbolism. If so, then this is clearly an entirely separate celestial object to the Sun symbol stood next to Shamene Baal. So, perhaps this Baal trinity is where the idea of the two fires, under the moonlight, comes from in the first place? Maybe this is where the pagan Beltaine festival stems from. In which case, there is a need to identify this mysterious second celestial object and, from my perspective, the most likely candidate is the Sun’s binary companion; a sub-brown dwarf ‘Dark Star’.

Coming back to the Irish folktales about Deirdre, there is more from the poem about her that interests me in this regard; particularly the conflict with the usurper Red King of Alba (7). Given the self-evident adoption of Baal-worship in ancient Ireland, it is not unreasonable to conclude that these folkloric stories could contain elements of more ancient myths: In particular, those myths which extended across Europe with the migration of the Celts, but have their origins in the Levant region, and ancient Mesopotamia before that. As such, I am tempted to draw a parallel here with the Babylonian creation myth Enuma Elish, and the Celestial Battle between the watery monster Tiamat (the Earth) and the powerful usurper god Marduk (Planet X/Nibiru), as described by Zecharia Sitchin (8).

I would also note that early in Deidre’s life, there is an event where a Druidical staff is broken in two over water, combined with a prophecy of a coming conqueror:

“Then Deirdre, an impetuous child, seized the druidical staff from the hand of Cathbad, broke it in two, and flung the pieces far out on the water. “Ah, Cathbad!” she cried, “there shall come One in the dim future for whom all your Druid spells and charms are naught.”” (9)

This has similarities to the breaking in two of Tiamat by Marduk – although, if this is the case, then it is a highly distorted ‘account’. Sadly, Deirdre’s eventual fate is to throw herself from a chariot to be crushed against rocks. Again, perhaps an allusion to cosmic catastrophism.

Lisa Cooper, who runs an excellent group on Facebook, wondered whether Deidre might represent Mars (10)? This analogy would explain the colour most associated with Deidre: ‘Saffron’. According to Sitchin, Mars was witness to a catastrophe early on in its life. The breaking of the staff over water, along with the appearance of the red star of ruin, represents the cataclysmic Celestial Battle which took place at the asteroid belt location (8). Deidre’s own tragic fate later, by falling against rocks, might then represent whatever whacked Mars to knock the stuffing out of it, causing it to appear now as a ‘dead’ world. So often associated with warlike male deities, it’s a refreshing change to consider a female characterisation for Mars – particularly in its prior form as a beautiful world before catastrophe struck.

It’s interesting to see how these old myths swirl around each other. Perhaps they have some common origins in cosmic events that took place long, long ago – and which have come down to us through oral tradition from as far back as the last Ice Age. Or perhaps they’re just stories. We’ll not know for sure, until we discover the ‘Red Star of Ruin’ itself. We may not have that long to wait.

Following on from this blog item, I received this fascinating email which I have permission to share with my readers:

Hi Andy,

I caught your 2015 interview with Kerry Cassidy tonight. I don’t know how I’d previously missed it but she mentioned it a week or so ago, to someone else she was talking to. Although this is not really my area or subject matter (at least not from a technical viewpoint), I’ve been interested in the Nibiru story since I discovered it around 2001 and I have noticed, of late, a lot of very recent photo and video footage by various amateur astronomers, showing what appears to be the same anomaly that you spoke of; that being shots of the sun with a secondary light source to one side of it. Therefore, when Kerry Cassidy mentioned your interview I wanted to check it out. I went to your site afterwards and had a skim through your latest blog. After reading the “Red Star of Ruin” I think I might have a tiny piece of the puzzle for you to slip in there.

It seems that you can’t nail down an origin for this story. In 1998 I was researching a lot conspiracy stuff with the intention of writing a screenplay. It got finished but never saw the light of day as a film, although I did eventually release it as an album. I read a lot of books on many subjects, one of which was ‘The Head of God’ by Kieth Laidler. Laidler was, apparently, the chief researcher for David Attenborough during one of his TV series (the secret life of plants I think), so he knows how to research information. The book was about the head of Jesus and/or that of John the Baptist, being removed after death and preserved in an Ivory box that was kept in the Ark of the Covenant and found by the Templars under the ruins of Solomon’s Temple. A lot of his research was about the Cult of the Severed Head in Egypt, a cult of which Jesus is supposed to have been a member during his “wilderness years”. In telling his story he points out that Akenahten, for reasons that escape my memory, got wind that he was in danger of being assassinated along with his daughter Scota. Plans were made for her to get out of Egypt and she took off with her entourage, taking with her a large marble or granite throne. They made their way to the Med, into Spain, then the south of France, through France to Normandy, across to Cornwall, into Wales and finally across the Irish sea to Ireland where they settled. The throne was deposited in the north of the country and became the throne on which the subsequent Kings of Ireland were crowned and is, if Laidler is correct, the real Stone of Scone and not the Scottish brick that was kept in London for all those years. Leaving behind a large Egyptian contingent, Scota eventually went across the sea where she became the the ruler of the land to which she gave her name, Scotland. He also points out that the predominant red hair of the Irish and the Scots is a direct result of interbreeding between the Egyptians and the locals.

Given that the Egyptians are said to have had a good knowledge of the Stars and their movement, it’s not unreasonable to assume that this story of the Red Star of Ruin came directly from those that had scientific knowledge of Nibiru.